For the Dancing and the Dreaming
by Unique .F
Summary: Valka struggles to reconnect with humans on Berk whilst mourning Stoick's death. It's harder than she thought it would be.
1. Valka

_"And here I'll stay," _Valka had told Hiccup at the beginning of the new world set in the ashes of the past. Icy spears had refracted the lights of the celebrations- Drago was gone, _gone, _and she had nothing else to do, nothing to strive for. Just Hiccup, now, and it had been worth it then to see the joy light up his eyes like chips of seaglass, so like her own, the answering smile that was fully _him_. Oh, she had known it would be _difficult, _after all, one does not spend twenty years living and breathing as a dragon only to be cruelly thrust back into the human world without regrets.

But it is harder than she had expected, continuing without him. She sees him in everything: his whisper is in the wind; his eyes reflect in the ocean waves that lap the sandy beaches bearing his scars; his knotted beard the warm orange of the setting sun. His lifeblood pounds in the freezing streams, tumbling loose on the hard wet shiny rocks that was his shining mail, (_just as he had bled uselessly when the blast ripped him apart) _she could hear his heartbeat in the cool earth. His face is carved behind her eyelids, every time she blinks, he is there, (_eyes glassy skin pale dead and cold and not Stoick because he wouldn't go not so soon not when he promised _anything.)

_(Stoick the Vast had never left Berk.)_

She hates the questions, the curiosity and quiet awe in the eyes of those young enough to not have known her _Before, _those who know her as the mysterious Vigilante dragon-training mother of Hiccup who had shown up one day. She hates the pity and sympathy, the shock, the surprise, when she is _different, _when Valka doesn't quite _fit _with the rest of Berk. She hates their foul human scent that she can never escape, their endless chatter, their blunt nails and flat teeth and repellent selfish hearts.

_("This is what it is to be a dragon, Hiccup!")_

She feels restless, panicked, a dragon caught wingless in a trap (_but she is no dragon, Valka is just a coward who'd run and run and run until she couldn't run anymore) _when they crowd around her, soft fleshy hands reaching out to pat their sweat slicked palms on her skin, sticking to her and making her feel vile, until all she could do is shake silently and stare at Cloudjumper, her fingers digging into her dragon's pebbled scales. Sometimes she'd be there for hours, lost in time and silence and a whirlwind of ice and fire, gazing into Cloudjumper's hypnotic yellow eyes.

But even the staring and the whispers was better than the darktime. Hiccup doesn't even question giving _their _old room back to Valka, he prefers his loft with Toothless. He doesn't even consider what it feels to Valka to lay in her marriage bed, slim frame dwarfed by the size of it- it had been built for two fully grown Vikings, after all- shut in, penned up, achingly _alone._

How could she say that she both craves and loathes the advent of night, the dispelling of human contact, the coming of the whispers that rattled in her skull, never calling, never screaming, just quietly softly _singing _in that rough scratchy voice that make her think of crackling fires and warm soft safeness. (_"I'll swim and sail on savage seas with ne'er a fear of drowning...")_

Stoick's voice, his presence, his scent, is very much alive here in the dark. When Valka closes her eyes, she can feel the weight of the arm he would throw across her waist, she can almost pretend she feels the scratchiness of his wiry beard against her face, the solid heat of companionship. Then the illusion dispels, and she is left with nothing, just a heart full of memories and regrets.

She hates herself for breaking every time when the memories are too much to bear, when his voice sings too loudly in her mind, when she opens her eyes and sees his staring back at her, face all crinkled up in a smile. She cannot help herself. She runs out to Cloudjumper every night and flings herself into the dragon's claws, listens to nothing but the wind sighing her regrets through his wings, digs her nails so hard into her palms she almost makes herself bleed. _I can stop it if I will it all away._

Hiccup notices the dark circles under her eyes. When he asks her how she sleeps, she smiles sadly and doesn't answer. _(I don't. I can't. Please don't make me. Please make me.)_

She misses the Alpha. Her King, he made it all go away. _How long does one have to be a dragon in heart and spirit before their mind becomes one, too? _All Valka knows is that when the King fixed his great stare on her, all thoughts of Stoick and Hiccup bled away. She hates herself for craving the numbness his cure provides, the cold savagery that overtakes her mind, the emptiness, and _it doesn't matter anymore. _She hates herself for wishing she could just _forget _now, forget the shock and love and _relief _in Stoick's eyes when he saw her, the hesitant, tender way he treated her, like broken glass, somehow _understanding _this Valka isn't the Valka he had married, the bright spritely thing become a crawling, shuffling dragonsoul, painfully disconnected, somehow shattered and reforged into a cold spear that still fooled itself to thinking it had some semblance of humanity.

Somehow it was easier then, knowing he was far away, hurting, but still breathing (_never quite knowing) _and allowing her memories of him to wash out, overwrung, fade away, become a soft blur of red green. Sometimes she forgot his name.

_(Oh gods Cloudjumper what is happening to me?)_

She would always rip herself out of it then, terrified to her very core. _What am I? _She wishes she had that now. She wishes she could stop the aching _pain _radiating down into her chest, a pain that never abates.

Her beloved (_and _hated_, he took _everything _from her) _Stormcutter is always there, always willing to fly with her in the remote silent clouds for hours and hours, until the sun sets and Valka has to turn away because the _red _reminds her of his blood painting the clouds. She tries to leave her worries behind on Berk, but they follow her like a swarm of fireworms, sharp biting teeth drawing blood with each taunting reminder.

_(You left to save them and yet you just ensured his death.)_

Hiccup is her only consolation. Her son makes her heart ache with all the love she doesn't know how to express, pride swelling up in her breast so strongly she feels as if she could finally take flight without the aid of her beloved draconic companion. In him she finds meaning and purpose and light, she listens to his every worry and cares for his every burden. She tries, but everything reminds her of her disability to connect.

She can't sit with him in the Mead Hall and listen to stories of his adventures because all she can hear is Stoick's ghost singing in her ear and the hot clammy press of _far too many people, _she can't cook for him, everything she tries comes out charred and black as if she had roasted it with Cloudjumper, and though he swallows it down she can tell he doesn't like it.

Her baby has grown up and Valka has missed all of it.

It hurts like fishing hooks catching in her throat when Gobber tells a laughing story of a troublesome child Hiccup, poking at things he shouldn't, the chaos and disaster that followed his every waking move. It kills her to see Hiccup's slightly forced smile brighten into a genuine one when he sees her, ever-lurking slightly in the shadows at the edge of the conversation, still painfully an outsider, but _trying._

_("All this time, you took after me...and where was I?")_

Other times, she can't even look at his face. On those mornings, she stares at the knotted wood in silence and tries not to feel Hiccup's sadness from across the table. She can't bear to look at him and see _Stoick, _corrupted and warped by Valka's features, Stoick's auburn hair, tempered with her brown, Stoick's eyes washed out by Valka's own, her nose replacing his, her narrow shoulders, jutting jawline. It feels like blasphemy of the highest order, a bittersweet pleasure pain of beautiful agony.

She surrounds herself with her dragons, and she flies away from her responsibilities, from her past, from her son. She and Cloudjumper dance in the sky the way only dragons can, and afterwards she'll curl up beneath his wings and shiver as if his warmth doesn't chase away the night chill. Cloudjumper croons, low and soft, and she thinks he is telling her a story, perhaps about a dragon who was trapped in a human body for love of a man. She knows it hurts Cloudjumper when he sees her heart hurting, the illness he cannot fix.

She wishes the King was alive with his remote, numbing stare. She wishes she had her own wings and fire breath and powerful sharp claws, as if the strength of her hide could fend of the weakness of her heart. But Valka always remains the same- weak.

She digs her nails into her palms and sways against Cloudjumper's side as she watches Hiccup and Toothless loop over Berk. It's dusk, soon it will be darktime, and Stoick's voice will echo inescapably through her head, a broken record gathering dust in the darkest points of memory and time.

_She is no dragon._

_"I'll swim and sail on savage seas with ne'er a fear of drowning and gladly ride the waves of life if you will marry me..."_


	2. Hiccup

Hiccup has never had a mother before.

Sometimes it jars him, how rightly it clicks into place, like his prosthetic does Toothless' saddle. But just like his prosthetic, sometimes he stands to walk or moves and it suddenly hits him, the _wrongness _of it, how unnatural and unused it is. In those moments he sees this strange being, this tall creature with his eyes and a loving smile as something truly removed from _his _world, his dragon-built world with a vast Viking shaped hole carved into it, a hole that dwarfs her slim frame so like his own utterly and completely.

He does not know her, and he doesn't know what she should be. He has vague thoughts of a warm embrace when he comes home, a meal on the table. But when he thinks of the stereotypical role of a mother all he sees is Astrid, who has brought him her broken weapons to fix like shirt hems and plonks herself demandingly at the table as if waiting for a plate to materialise, as if they were reversed. Mother, and warrior; boyfriend and girlfriend.

It confuses him.

Valka slips into his life the way smoke used to curl up in the cracks of the windows during dragon raids, silently, immutably. She is a loved, unfamiliar shape soaring through the clouds beside him on her own great dragon, a dragon she trained as he did, that she rides as he does. They are so alike it still makes Hiccup grin, stupidly, widely, because _he has a mum, _and she's _the Dragon Vigilante, _and she rides a _goddamn Stormcutter _and could Snotlout's mum who had been there since the day he was born say that she literally _spoke with the King of Dragons- _and he _obeyed her?! _

Maybe he is a little in awe of her still, that something this incredible could somehow still hold the earthy, warm title of mother in his head.

_"Now you know where I get my dramatic flair!"_

She scorns the old ways, vibrantly flouts her rebellion as vivid as the bright blues she would paint on Cloudjumper's wings the few times she deigns to join the dragon racing. _(She always wins.) _She remains respectful of Gothi in her presence, but sometimes Hiccup catches her with a spark in her eye when she looks over the Elder's head, as visible as an eye-roll, and he cannot help but feel uneasy. He has never heard her speak a word to the Gods, and perhaps it is his unease, but he feels awkward when she remains mockingly silent when Gobber rants about the wrath of Thor when the lightning struck the metal dragon perches, or when she sees Hiccup leaving a bit of hard bread tossed carelessly to the household sprites.

Her total rejection of all that he has grown familiar with, comfortable, for twenty years, astounds and alarms Hiccup. He admires her for it, and he fears her. He wonders if she was always like this. He wonders what she was like with his dad, if his dad felt too the nonverbalised rejection undercutting every trapping of culture.

It's difficult for her, being back on Berk. He knows this, knows it's like trying to slip a puzzle piece that used to fit into a different puzzle, pushing it and shoving it until it reluctantly lies flat. He thinks it will grow easier, better, with time. She misses Stoick.

He does too.

He never forgets the way she was when he was with her at the dragon sanctuary. Perhaps she was freer there, he thinks, perhaps she was never supposed to come back to Berk. She was so light, gay, as if she had no need for Cloudjumper's wings, she could take flight on her own.

When she had met his dad again for the first time in twenty years, he could see the tension, the fear, palpable in the air around her. When he forgave her, she was transformed once more into that eclectic, wild dragonwoman, unreal with happiness and hope.

He thinks sometimes he imagined it. She does not look like that now.


	3. Astrid

**Okay, this is terrible, and awkward, and weird, but I was trying my very best not to turn it into Astrid/Valka, okay. Apparently Unique ships it. I have also only slept for about three hours in the last three days. So. Um. I'm sorry. Here you go.**

Astrid has met her future mother-in-law a total of three times, and she tentatively approves. Valka loves Hiccup, that much is clear, even if nothing else about her is.

Astrid likes simple problems. Problems that can be solved by a whack of a hammer over a head or a go-fetch-this, go-fetch-that. She deals in the plain everyday. Astrid never went hunting for trolls as a child. She played with knives and learned how to make fires.

_("I'm not listening to anything you have to say!")_

Hiccup and Astrid are different.

Hiccup's mind is vast, open, unexplored. He looks at a problem and sees a thousand possibilities Astrid cannot grasp. She marvels at his ability to _create _and innovate. She loves that about him, that he is nothing similar to her. Sometimes she regards him with a sort of exasperated fondness, most often when he is ranting to her about a new type of dragon saddle that will somehow make the dragon fly faster, his green eyes wide and sparkling with joy and happiness. She loves to kiss him then, if only to shut him up about aerodynamic equations.

Occasionally, he leaves his sketchbook lying around, and half-curious, half-guilty, Astrid will lift it and flick through the charcoal drawings, and fall into a whole new world outlined in harsh black lines, Hiccup's lifeblood and powerful thought scrawling itself idly across a page. Designs for a mysterious device that turns a metal bar into a _sword made out of fire. _Bizarre bows that are the size of Gronckles but only require one man to throw rocks the size of boulders.

(_"Alright...I admit it, this is pretty cool.")_

But sometimes...rarely...sometimes...it scares her.

Sometimes she holds him especially tightly to her when he is talking about his new machines, his words speeding up until they are tripping over each other in their impatience to get out, and she is terrified his mind will whirl so fast with all these possibilities it will snap and Hiccup will go immediately, irreversibly _mad._

_("The rest of us would have done it. Why didn't you?")_

If Hiccup's mind moves on a rhythm Astrid doesn't understand, Valka's is dancing to a whole different song.

_("Some of us were just born different.")_

Astrid has no idea what goes on behind Valka's wide green eyes. (They are always so wide, startled, as if she is constantly surprised to find herself here, half on defensive, half curious, with an immutable spark of _differentness.) _She walks with a jerky sort of grace that Astrid can't help but compare to Cloudjumper's austere movements, and it disconcerts Astrid immeasurably when Valka cocks her head, studying the object of her attention with a peculiar intentness that seems to read a deeper meaning, only to disregard it a moment later.

Astrid admires her. How can she not?

_("That's your mother?!") _

Valka is incredible. Even if she disturbs Astrid with her silent sincerity, those cursed _eyes, _Astrid cannot help but appreciate Valka's power over the dragons- even the fieriest Monstrous Nightmare, the most prickly Nadder, the most terrifying Whispering Death bows eagerly to her hand, _longing _to be subjugated. She remembers Drago's terrifying show of dominance over Hookfang, and cannot help but feel a frisson of unease shiver down her spine when she watches Valka tame a wild Gronckle with a tilt of the head and a wave of her hand. _  
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_("The greatest dragon master this world has ever seen!" "Dragon master? I alone control the dragons!")_

It seems whatever eldritch power Valka has over dragons- and Astrid is more than half convinced that perhaps she is god-blessed -does not extend to people. It's both alarming and saddening watching Valka _try. _And she does- so very hard that Astrid cannot help but pity her the slightest amount.

_("You scared him!" "_I _scared _him?_") _

Within a week of being back in Berk, Valka has snarled at three people (Spitelout, constantly following her, asking her where she had been, Gobber, pestering her to join them in the Mead Hall, Hiccup, grabbing hold of her arms and startling her) and clawed Tuffnut with her dragon gauntlets when he and Ruffnut jumped out at her from behind a house. She sounds feral when she growls- Astrid remembers Spitelout going the colour of sour milk, pale and white, when Valka whipped around like a striking snake, lips curling back frighteningly fast over her teeth and then the _snarl- _oh, richly layered with with contempt, derision, disgust, undertoned with a hefty dose of _stay away from me. _

Then the apologies, and escaping into Cloudjumper's magnificent embrace, becoming nothing but a four-winged shape in the sky.

Growling at people is not uncommon on Berk, with a load of aggressive and communication stunted Vikings living in one place. Astrid even remembers as a young child practising her own growl in front of the mirror to make it as scary as she could. A good fierce war cry was considered vital for every Viking- small home repair, bread-making, war-mongering, or dragon-riding.

But there is, as ever, something uniquely draconic about Valka's that makes the hair on the back of Astrid's neck stand up. Perhaps it is because that no matter what, Cloudjumper will appear at her side, deadly and looming, his great yellow eyes uncompromising and his sharp tipped wings shading Valka lightly- just lightly enough to send a clear message of _mine _to any dragon that has a thought of interference. Perhaps it is how that no matter where the event occurs, all of the dragons simultaneously glance towards it, as if tuned into a great collective hive mind which reverberates with _threat. _

_("She's the Queen, and they're her workers.")_

Astrid knows that Valka is nothing like the Red Death, of course. The Bewilderbeast was the Alpha. But he rose at Valka's command, and attacked Valka's enemies.

Either way, Valka is the most comfortable around dragons. She is tense and cautious around humans, guarded in a way that she is not around dragons. Astrid thinks Valka likes her. She imagines if she didn't, Astrid would know about it- from the dragons, before Valka herself let anything slip.

Valka's dragon sanctuary was hardly unobtrusive- and Astrid thinks about walking along the sooty beach gathering driftwood for the funeral fire and finding half-frozen helmets and weapons entombed forever in the ice. It was probably from the recent battle. Sometimes Astrid wonders what happened to those strangers possibly found it before and didn't have the good luck to be a long-lost son.

_("Our parents' war is about to become ours! Figure out which side you're on!")_

Valka is a problem Astrid has no idea how to solve. It's lucky she has Hiccup, then. No doubt he'd find some sort of solution to Valka's increasing tension with the rest of her race.

Astrid wonders if dragon nip would work.


	4. Gobber

**Okay, I'm so, so sorry. Gobber's voice in this is non-existent...I could not get a handle on anything. Well, if any of you have any other people you want me to do, drop me a line and I'll do my best. :)**

The hammer is rhythmic, but the sound it makes is loud and jarring, an anathema to itself. The metal glows yellow white, the thinnest edges fading to cherry red. He nudges the flap of soft metal up, over itself, folding it and striking it with careful precision, automatically compensating for the loss of the limb, the natural flexibility and control it no longer affords him.

Blacksmithing is a difficult art that none on Berk save his young apprentice quite understands. The wrong temperature, the wrong angle, the slightest miscalculation in a strike can lead to an improperly balanced weapon, a ripple in otherwise flawless metal- the slightest imperfection that can lead to a bend, break or shatter at just the wrong moment. A failure that can mean the life of a warrior.

There is a cold logic and power to blacksmithing that is indisputable to some. He thinks it is what appeals to Hiccup, makes him keep coming back even now when he is useful, when blacksmithing can be nothing more than a hobby because he is a Dragon Rider and the son of a chief. Hiccup has to make it clever, Gobber knows.

Gobber has worked the forge long enough to know the intelligence in bare black steel, but he prefers the simple beauties of a sharp edge honed by forge-light and a powerful weapon crafted raw from his hands and his craft.

_("Dragons are complex creatures, Hiccup. They operate on many emotional levels. Me? I've only got the one.")_

He is cheery as he works, humming songs to the steel he shapes, whispering words of strength and valour into a mace that might save a life or take a life, it is not up to Gobber. It doesn't matter much to him. Gobber is at heart a warrior, a Viking like the rest of them.

"Oh, I've got my axe and I've got my mace and I love-" He turns to shove the half finished rod into the hot fire to soften again so that he can hammer it out into shape, only to find the fire sullen and cold. "Grump!" He roars, but the lazy Hotburple is nowhere to be seen.

Gobber rarely gets irritated, but it annoys him that Grump doesn't keep the temperature nice and constant. It throws off his steel, and the rods he makes for Toothless' saddle can't have any fault.

He peers out of his forge, squinting at the pallid sunlight. "Of course," he grumbles lightly when he spots Valka standing in the middle of the square, which is still muddy and puddled from the previous night's driving rain. She has the innate capability to distract _any _dragon, there is really no way he can blame Grump.

She is staring dreamily up into the clouds, sunk deep into thought. A Terror has slung itself around her neck and sleeps with a long brown and grey-streaked braid held in its mouth. Grump sprawls sleepily next to her; her hand absently traces the crevices in his green scales. A blue and yellow Nightmare's head rests gently at her boots, horns pressing into her legs, tongue lolling contentedly from his jaws. The vast spiky body coils around her; her other hand is negligently running her thumb over the sharp shoulder spines so imitating the crazed flicker of flames, testing their lethal capability.

She is tender in her complete confidence of the dangerous beasts laying tamely at her feet.

_("A downed dragon is a dead dragon.")_

Gobber likes dragons, but sometimes the way Valka treats them as scaled, winged extensions of herself is enough to make him think about new undies.

"GRUMP!" Gobber hollers as loud as he can, striking his hammer hand against the anvil in annoyance, "WAKE UP YER GREAT LUMP!"

The shout startles all four- the Terror squeals and falls off Valka's shoulder, who spins around so fast she loses her purchase on the muddy ground and collapses in a heap.

Immediately, all three dragons begin snarling at Gobber, including, to the blacksmith's badly-disguised shock, amenable, friendly Grump. The Nightmare explodes into flames and mantles its wings over Valka's prone form protectively. The Terror shoots a warning blast of flame.

_("I've seen a Nadder's spine slice through a man's eyeball like a grape...I've watched my own arm be devoured by a Monstrous Nightmare...But I've never seen anything more disturbing...")_

Gobber steps back, half-raising his hammer hand, threatened. He does not show it, only laughs, big and bold, and squints at his dragon. "Calm down, you overgrown sausage," he tells Grump, but the Hotburple is immune to his words, to the bond they share, and Gobber cannot deny it makes him blink.

Valka's eyes flash green in the shifting shadows under the Nightmare's flaming wings as she rolls into a crouch. She raises a hand up and slightly behind her to reach the creature's snout, and the Nightmare's flames gutter out instantly to avoid hurting her. Valka's stare is fixed on Gobber. Next she knuckles the Terror's spine with a deft touch and it goes limp under her hand with a contented purr.

_("I've forgotten more about dragons than most men will ever know.")_

Then forward; she moves in a crouch that suddenly reminds Gobber of icy caves and Valka standing alone, crowned by spears of blue white and attended by silent beasts with nothing but adoration of her in their eyes. He thinks especially about the Stormcutter, his spines flaring and head low to the ground in threat, slinking out from behind an icy pillar as Stoick had approached Valka.

_("They'll see you as sick, or insane, and go after the more Viking like ones instead!")_

_Threat._

Grump is still growling.

She touches his jaw lightly and just like that, he stops and slumps over into a snooze. Valka chuckles, low and warm, and whatever ghost Gobber sees is a twisted parody of the Valka Haddock he had known smiles at him.

"Dragons don't like loud, sudden noises." She reminds him gently, and there's a glint of mischief in her stone green eyes.

"They were protecting you, Valka," Gobber says, giving up on getting the forge relit by Grump. He starts trying to pump the bellows himself, but his missing hand hampers him. Valka steps forward to help.

_("Nice of you to join the party! I thought you'd been carried off!")_

"I fell." She shrugs as if it is no big thing. "Sometimes it happens. Rarely. Hardly ever." She smirks at him and Gobber rolls his eyes."Yeah, yeah. I'll take my chances with Grump than your devilry." He thinks of Valka casually dancing across dragons' wings thousands of feet up and shivers. Valka hums low in her throat, like Grump does when Gobber scratches his belly, and it is disturbingly off putting from a human throat.

"You're lucky Cloudjumper was not here," she murmurs quietly. "He has a tendency to overreact."

Gobber thinks about his best friend's gruff tears, the loneliness of twenty years, a son without a mother and a good man without a wife and replies, "Aye." He falls silent after that. He cannot help but blame her for what she did to his best friend.

As if she senses it, Valka's shoulders stiffen, and a palpable defensiveness colours the quiet. The Terror still by her feet growls softly. Gobber shoots it a look.

He has never seen Valka as a threat before. It is a development he does not like and unsettles him.

Gobber sees the world simply. In his mind enough people insist on making it complex that he doesn't have to. There are those who are a threat to him and his, there are those who aren't, and there are those who could be a threat but would never choose to be. Drago Bludvist had been a threat, to him, to all of Berk. Hiccup, before he had tamed Toothless, had been straddling the line of threat and nonthreat, but afterwards firmly landed in the boundary of the _capability-to-be-a-threat _section along with his father. Stoick was an ally and a friend, and he would never raise his axe to Gobber, but he certainly had the capability to. Being aware of those who are strong enough to kill him has saved Gobber's life on several occasions. It is a hazard of being a Viking.

_("Keeping all this raw...Viking...constrained...! There will be consequences!")_

Valka is not. She is a threat. A live, current threat.

He does not like to see her this way, not when he remembers Valka the way she is supposed to be, a young woman with bright, laughing green eyes that sparkled with mischief and a ready challenge, with twigs in her hair and scrapes on her elbows, who eagerly pelted old Mildew with meatballs that were more like rocks. He does not recognise the serious, wild woman that wears a face resembling Valka's, slipped and worn and tired with time and dragon-scars.

(_"Who would have thought it, eh? He has this way with the beasts!")_

More than once Gobber wonders if this is actually Valka, not some strange imposter that slipped into her place. A place left empty and dusty, a trapped moment of hearts carved into trees in reckless youth and an old cradle withered by dragon fire.

She does not seem to know herself; sometimes Gobber looks at her and recognises the desperate, lost longing he sees in Hiccup's face when he has spent too long land-bound. Free spirits both but-

She is paler than she should be, and there is bruise like shadows under her tired eyes. Her posture slumps with defeat and vibrates with challenge, a contradiction Gobber recognises from Hiccup's not so distant youth. He sees her stagger when she stands up too quickly and sees her boring a a tighter hole on her belt leather. She may not be the Valka he recognises, but Stoick did. And Gobber trusts his old friend, even when he is dead.

Dead. It hurts still. His shield-brother, companion in battle. They'd taken on the Red Death together. Faced impossible odds. Won. Survived. He'd been ready to die with Stoick, many times. A hazard of being a warrior in a world full of threats.

_("Then I can double that time.")_

In the end, it was Stoick's love for his son and for his wife that killed him. Gobber thinks it was the way he wanted to go. No Viking wants a boring death- and what a death! Valiantly standing before a Night Fury, protecting his son. Gods only know the struggle that must have taken place when his soul was taken up to Valhalla!

_("Ah, nothing could hurt Hiccup as long as that Night Fury's around. It's a _Night Fury!_")_

He still misses Stoick. He wonders what his friend would do if he saw Valka like this, now. Alone with only dragons against the rest of the world and still as full as challenge as ever, although now she fights against herself. Hurting. And not healing.

Gobber does not pride himself on perception. He is not clever- not ruthlessly inventive like Valka or endlessly creative like Hiccup, Berk's greatest forward thinkers. But Gobber understands grief.

_("You know, you two are going to get yourself in serious trouble these days. Not everyone appreciates this way of life.")_

He doesn't understand Valka, not the way he used to. It makes his heart heavy. But Gobber has always been smarter than he lets on. And there is something about Valka that makes his teeth ache.

Or maybe it is the rock cake of Astrid's he tried that morning.

_("Her meatballs could kill more beasts than a battleaxe...")_


	5. Fishlegs

Fishlegs doesn't like the dark. It's the unsurety of it, a lack of confidence that no amount of reading and mental preparation can ever ready him for. He likes to think he's got better, now he has Meatlug, and he knows his precious dragon always has his back. She doesn't like the dark either, he can tell. He doesn't know why.

_("What!? You _know _I hate the dark!")_

He likes to think it's not a learned behaviour from him, but Fishlegs is smart. _(Not an excellent or particularly valued trait on Berk in the past.)_ He knows that dragons imitate their riders more often than not. Barf and Belch are crazy, just like Tuffnut and his dear Ruffnut. Stormfly, proud, prickly, and competitive, there is no doubt of her rider. Toothless, sharing that same mystic quality of leadership and aloofness Hiccup has always had, only portraying it more obviously now he's Alpha, so matched to his rider right down to their matching prosthetics.

He doesn't like to think about Skullcrusher changing to be like Eret. The hardheaded dragon, warm at heart, is already beginning to show signs of vanity and ego. Fishlegs resents Eret, slightly. It feels as if they have swapped Stoick for Eret, a thoroughly unfair trade. Oh- and Valka as well, he supposes, and about _nine hundred new dragons, _which is _amazing, _but not so much that it came at the cost of Stoick's life.

It is dark this night, dark like Toothless' draping wings but far less friendly. Torches dance capriciously in the half-light, casting yellow pools of flickering illumination on the tamped-down earthen paths of the village. Rain falls, thick and sleeting, and Fishlegs takes careful note of the clouds. They are pregnant and swollen, and he knows a storm will probably drive in on the morning. He tells himself to remember to mention this to Hiccup.

Fishlegs has a basket full of fish slung over his back, manfully ignoring the reek. He hates the smell of raw fish, but Meatlug loves it best, and his princess deserves only the finest food. She has to work harder than the other dragons to keep up, she has little wings. She needs her energy, hence why Fishlegs is bumbling through the rain from the direction of the well-lit, welcoming Mead Hall, when all the other Vikings are busy eating and shouting songs, to the dragon hangar where the dragons usually wait for their riders to come back out of the rain. Meatlug still likes to stay in the house with him, of course, but -Fishlegs can't control the dark red flush on his cheeks- now that he's not _alone _so often, it's better for his girl to get used to staying with the other dragons.

He breathes a sigh of relief when he thuds the heavy doors closed behind him, turns and slings the basket back over his shoulder and continues down the dark, curving tunnel towards the central cavern. The hangar had been Hiccup's idea, to renovate the existing Whispering Death tunnels into a dragon stables to keep all of their dragons sheltered and comfortable, and hole up a security breach while they were at it. It was a smart idea, Fishlegs had to admit. Hiccup was the best at those.

"Alright then," Fishlegs mutters to himself, sidling into a patch of light. He can hear the dragons below ripping into their dinners, muffled snarls and snaps as a Snafflefang got in a scrap with a -Zippleback? No, Nightmare- presumably over a piece of fish. He peers over the roughly hewn banister down onto the cavern floor, and promptly drops his basket and _screams._

The head of the figure hunched below in the center lounging nest of dragons, tearing into raw, bloody meat with bare hands and teeth, snaps up to look at him, mouth partially open, red blood sluicing down it's sharp chin like water; its hands are dyed with the crimson liquid, splattered all up its arms and chest, drips on its leg wrap. Fishlegs is pinned in place by sharp, dark eyes, only a high, thready scream coming continuously from his throat.

All around the figure, dragons stir, open their mouths to reveal mouthfuls of sharp, piercing teeth and yellow eyes alight with defensiveness. Valka's Stormcutter flares its upper wings, head frills standing up and a warning tongue of flame shooting out of the razor sharp maw. They are aggravated by his screaming, he knows, but he cannot stop, he is pinned by the..._thing's _stare.

Somewhere, distantly, through the roaring sound in his ears like water and the bounding tattoo of his thumping heart he registers the buzzing sound of familiar wings. Meatlug's claws scratch against the rock as she crashes awkwardly to land in the small space beside him, jarring Fishlegs slightly as she does so. He does not look at her, he can't.

Meatlug bumps her head urgently against Fishlegs' belly, almost knocking him over, and finally breaking their locked gazes. His dragon's eyes are wide and warm when they look into his own, as if she understands Fishlegs perfectly, as she always had. She licks his cheek. _Don't be afraid. _

"Did you see that girl?" Fishlegs mutters wildly, it has to have been a dream, a delusion, something. Perhaps Tuffnut had snuck some dragon nip in his dinner while he wasn't looking and he is hallucinating. It has to be it. No one on Berk in their right mind would-

He hears the _scritch-scratch _of scraping dragon claws against the rock and the purposeful _thump-thump _of footsteps, booted footsteps, human footsteps. _Odin, Thor, have mercy!_

Meatlug nudges him again, harder this time, a warning. Fishlegs is all too eager to take the message and scrambles to his feet. "Come on girl!" he yelps, and flings himself onto her back, hiding his face against her dark earthy scales. "Go, Meatlug, go!" he shouts. _If you can't see it, it can't hurt you._

Meatlug takes off, low and bumbling over the other dragons' craning heads, and shoots off out of the hangar into the darkening sky. Fishlegs clings to her back, terrified and shaking.

The footsteps stop, and Valka pokes the discarded basket curiously. Fish spills out. She hums in approval.

"Anyone else hungry?" She calls to the settling dragons cheerfully, waving a fish. A few dragon's lift their heads, but then let then flop back on the ground again, their distended bellies straining. Valka chuckles low in her throat and sets about expertly peeling the raw flesh from the bones. Twenty years has made her rather an expert at the art of stripping a corpse, and well, she never was any good at cooking.

**A bit of humour to cheer you up.**


End file.
